I’m delighted to report that Prof. Josh Blackman of the South Texas College of Law will be joining our blog. Josh teaches, writes, and litigates about constitutional law; he has been extensively involved in debates about Obamacare, the Emoluments Clause, 3D-printed guns, DAPA, the proposed ABA speech code for lawyers (Rule 8.4(g)), and much more. He has written many law review articles and four books, two of them with our own Randy Barnett: Constitutional Law: Cases in Context (3d ed.) and An Introduction to Constitutional Law: 100 Supreme Court Cases Everyone Should Know. He has also guest-blogged often with us here, as well as writing his own blog, JoshBlackman.com, so many of you may know him from that. We very much look forward to having him with us!
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As we’ve said in many articles, a new wave of investments in automation is already underway, could eliminate 20% to 25% of the current American workforce by 2030, or about 40 million jobs.
In the latest installment of robots plotting a takeover, we set our eyes on a Singapore-based firm called LionsBot International – who has developed an autonomous robot that can sing, rap, wink and even tell jokes while scrubbing floors, reported Yahoo.
The company debuted the robot at a live demonstration ceremony on July 17 at the Gardens by the Bay, a resort located in the Central Region of Singapore, adjacent to the Marina Reservoir.
About 300 of these robots will be produced by March 2020, will allow the company to be the first in the world to offer cleaning robots on a subscription model to clients.
Prospective and current clients can rent the robots at a rate of $1,350 to $2,150 per month.
As of last week, two of the robots have been deployed at National Gallery Singapore and Jewel Changi Airport in April, with more expected at other commercial facilities in the coming months.
LionsBot said at least six of its clients would deploy the robots early next year.
According to LionsBot, the cleaning robot is more efficient than a human and can work longer hours.
“Multiple cleaning robots are able to coordinate and clean a given area simultaneously, without the need for human programming,” the company said in a statement.
Besides regional demand, LionsBot has also received orders from companies based in Australia and Japan, said a company spokesperson, with the possible introduction to the US by 2021 to 2022.
LionsBot’s clients will be able to choose from 13 different types of robots including ones that scrub, mop, vacuum, and sweep across various terrains, effectively eliminating low wage cleaning jobs. Another version of the robot can also transport up to 1,000 pounds of equipment.
At the launch event at Gardens by the Bay, Senior Minister of State for the Ministry of Trade and Industry Koh Poh Koon said cleaning robots could raise productivity, adding that the government will continue to promote the proliferation of automation.
However, the trade minister made zero mention of the upcoming labor force shift due to automation, how hundreds of thousands of people across the region will be displaced because of robots in the years ahead.
More importantly, once these robots wash ashore in the US (maybe in the next few years), and most likely on the West Coast first, a tidal wave of job losses due to automation will be seen as corporate America continues to streamline their operations with technology to curb margin compression.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Lxp7uf Tyler Durden
Just in case we haven’t provided you with enough creepy dystopian news lately, the nation’s leader in Creepy Dystopia, California, has a brand new program. The “Cradle to Career Data System” will study and document everything about a child born in the state.
But don’t worry, it’s for your children’s own good.
What the heck is the “Cradle to Career Data System”?
Beginning at birth and stalking the child until he or she joins the workforce, California wants to keep on eye on all sorts of demographics and variables. They’ll do this by collecting information from “partner entities.” They’ll use this information, according to the Pasadena Star, to “provide appropriate interventions and supports to address disparities in opportunities and improve outcomes for all students.”
Who are these partner entities, you ask?
The “partner entities” include (but are not limited to) “state entities responsible for elementary and secondary education data, entities responsible for early learning data, segments of public higher education, private colleges and universities, state entities responsible for student financial aid, childcare providers, state labor and workforce development agencies, and state departments administering health and human services programs.” (source)
So, your kid’s teachers, principles, professors, babysitters, and the purveyors of any state services you happen to use will all cough up every detail of your child’s life.
Of course, California just wants to help.
This to me has hints of communist countries who pluck the brightest students from their home and educate them to work for the state. However, the admitted goal is data collection for the folks who make the rules.
Easily the creepiest thing to come out of California since “The Silence of the Lambs” was released into theaters, the “Cradle to Career Data System” aims to collect the ethnic, economic and educational records of every child in the state, track their grades and their progress into early adulthood, and make some form of the data available to policy makers, analysts and activists. (source)
This isn’t a maybe. It’s already passed as a trailer bill (so it didn’t go through the usual legislative process) and has been funded with a budget of $10 million.
The governor’s Office of Planning and Research is now authorized to enter into contracts with “planning facilitators” who will convene advisory groups “comprised of representatives of students, parents, labor, business and industry, equity and social justice organizations, researchers, privacy experts, early education experts, school districts, charter schools, and county offices of education.” (source)
Californians, your children’s privacy is at stake here. They are going to become part of a pile of data that will be used to enact future laws to assure “equity.” But at any time, these records will be there, the life of your child, every time they got sent to the principal’s office, who stands up to authority, who has special skills or talents, what the child’s parents are like. That person’s entire life in one handy file. And pardon me if I don’t believe the data collection will stop once they get a job. Data is king right now, so why give up on a good thing?
We’re already tracked everywhere we go once we’re old enough to have a cellphone or use the internet. But this starts right, as the title of the program points out, at the cradle.
Why are they doing this?
It’s all about “social justice.” Think quotas on steroids.
“Advocates have been demanding data for the people in the Golden State for years,” the Equity Alert explains, to “answer key questions about whether and how our state schools, colleges, universities, and workforce systems are closing racial equity gaps and serving Californians.”
It sounds as if the goal is to go beyond laws that ban discrimination and beyond affirmative action into a brave new world, one in which government bureaucrats tally the economic success of each racial and ethnic group and sub-group and award government funding in an effort to reach “equity.” (source)
Of course, we all know that things like this are actually not equitable, at least not to kids from groups who are not considered to be “at risk.”
There’s no word yet on whether or not parents will be able to opt out on behalf of their offspring.
This certainly normalizes being surveilled.
We’ve written a great deal on this site about the social credit system and the surveillance state in which we live. To me, a program like this seems like just another nail in the coffin of privacy. Don’t think that this will stop at the border of California.
These kids will, from their first moment of awareness, be concerned about their permanent record. That’s an awfully big burden to put on someone who still eats with his fingers and wears pull-ups to bed. These children will spend their entire lives under a microscope, for better or for worse, while some data entry person types their every action of note into their record.
In the Senate, Bernie Sanders is battling to raise the national minimum wage to $15 an hour (a decision that would almost certainly lead to the destruction of millions of low-skill, low-pay jobs, but we digress). But some of his own campaign workers say they’re being forced to survive on less – some calculate their pay at $13 an hour for a 60-hour workweek – and now they’re demanding more.
Sanders’ unionized campaign organizers have leaked a story to the Washington Post where they complain about how their pay doesn’t meet the standards that Sanders supposedly believes should be applied to all Americans.
The embarrassing story, Sanders’ campaign field organizers, who occupy the lowest rung on the campaign staff ladder, complain that they’re being forced to depend on payday loans to survive and that, in one state, four people have quit in the past month because of their financial struggles (though, if one is struggling financially, giving up one’s only source of income would seem to make little sense).
One field organizer complained in the Sanders’ campaign internal Slack that he needed more money “because I need to be able to feed myself.”
Another utilized the rhetorical concept of irony by quoting a Sanders speech: “As you know, real change never takes place from the top on down, it always takes place from the bottom on up.”
Furthermore, the demands for higher salaries come just months after the Sanders campaign workers union and the campaign leadership reached a collective bargaining agreement that was effective as of May 2.
The agreement established wage classifications for national and state staff, ranging from $15 an hour for interns and canvassers to $100,000 annual salaries for bargaining unit deputies.
Field organizers, who are on the front lines of the campaign’s crucial voter contact efforts, were to be paid not by hours worked but via an annual salary set at $36,000. Regional field directors were to be paid $48,000 annually, and statewide department directors were allocated $90,000 per year.
But shortly after the agreement was reached, the complaints started pouring in. Sanders’ campaign manager Faiz Shakir swiftly called an all-staff meeting where he proposed a modified agreement with modestly higher pay. But in a vote, Shakir’s deal was rejected.
The messages caught Shakir’s attention, and later that day he sent an email to the staff thanking them for their comments. “I do believe you are owed an explanation for the situation we find ourselves in,” he wrote in an email obtained by The Post.
In his email, Shakir recapped his thinking from May 17 and expressed regret with the outcome.
“I have no idea what debates and conversations were had, but candidly, it was a disappointing vote from my perspective,” he wrote of the union’s decision to reject his proposal. “But the campaign leadership respected the union process and the will of the membership.”
Shakir said that it would be damaging to the campaign’s budget to implement a pay hike after expanding field staff based on previously planned salary figures. In conclusion, he said, he would negotiate the matter only through the channels established by the union arrangement.
Now, the union is preparing to send Shakir and the rest of the campaign leadership a new (presumably budget busting) proposal.
Here are some of their demands:
That field organizers receive a salary of $46,800, while regional field directors be paid $62,400.
That the campaign cover 100% of the health-care costs for employees making $60,000 or less a year (currently, the campaign pays all premiums for salaried employees making $36,000 or less, while those making more are covered at a rate of 85%).
That campaign staff be reimbursed for automobile transportation at $0.58 per mile while they’re traveling around canvassing for Sanders.
In a draft letter to Sanders’ campaign manager obtained by the Washington Post, the campaign workers said they “cannot be expected to build the largest grassroots organizing program in American history while making poverty wages Given our campaign’s commitment to fighting for a living wage of at least $15 an hour, we believe it is only fair that the campaign would carry through this commitment to its own field team.”
Their union issued a nebulous statement about the workers’ demands on Thursday night.
In a statement issued earlier Thursday night, the union representing the campaign workers, United Food & Commercial Workers Local 400, said it could not comment “on specific, ongoing internal processes between our members and their employer.”
“As union members, the Bernie 2020 campaign staff have access to myriad protections and benefits secured by their one-of-a-kind union contract, including many internal avenues to democratically address any number of ongoing workplace issues, including changes to pay, benefits, and other working conditions,” the statement said.
“We look forward to continuing to work closely with our members and the management of the Bernie 2020 campaign to ensure all workers have dignity and respect in the workplace.”
While some of Sanders’ campaign workers insist they won’t be able to build a primary-winning machine without being paid “a living wage” the sad reality – for Bernie – is that raising the pay of the campaign’s lowest-paid workers by 50% will force the campaign to shed personnel and ultimately have fewer people in the field out there canvassing.
We wonder: What kind of impact do they think that will have on Bernie’s chances?
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2M62Ymq Tyler Durden
Former Secretary of State George Schultz has an idea for dealing with increased immigration from the Northern Triangle region of Central America, which includes of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras: he wants to spend more money on foreign aid.
In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Schultz writes that the countries of the Northern Triangle could “increase the ‘supply’ of good governance by us[ing] foreign aid to fund better policing, transparency and higher-quality services—and apply international pressure to root out corruption and encourage political reform.”
And who could supply this foreign aid?
According top Schultz, “the U.S. is the only nation with the economic, technological and political authority to lead,” and “[t]he Inter-American Development Bank could do so by redirecting existing funds without new U.S. expenditures, and could get started with a phone call in Washington.”
Schultz wisely doesn’t mention any dollar amounts. How could he? His proposal is clearly meant to be a sort of trial balloon: demand more government spending now, and work out all the details in the back rooms later.
But we know how this sort of thing works.
There is no real expectation that foreign aid would actually remake the economies of the Northern Triangle.
In reality, it will be yet another foreign aid boondoggle: friends of the US regime will receive funds. There will be little follow-up as to how the money is spent. The money may even go to fund despots who will use the funds to murder their enemies. George Schultz’s personal friends and colleagues will no doubt get their cut. This is how the US foreign aid game is played.
It is interesting that Schultz doesn’t mention something that does have the potential for revolutionizing the region’s access to capital and its standard of living. It will do this while greatly lessening the incentive to emigrate from the region to the US: unrestricted trade with the United States.
To accomplish this, the US need not collect any new taxes. It need not impose any new regulations. It need not form any international “coalitions.”
Instead, it only has to make the Northern Triangle a true Free Trade Zone with full access to US markets.
At this point, some observers may claims “the US already has a free trade agreement with Central America! In fact, the region is largely duty free!” But this objection helps to illustrate just how much the term “free trade” has been corrupted in the phrase “free trade agreement.” In practice, only qualifying goodscan be imported to the US from Central America duty free. In order to qualify, goods must meet a variety of bureaucratic requirements stemming from “rule of origin” requirements. These rules exist to prevent “trade diversion” and other types of trade in which a Central American country might import parts from outside the free trade zone, add only small amounts of value, and then export the finished product to the US. Thus, trade between Central America and the US is not really free, and the trade agreements specifically prevent Central American countries from becoming trade and shipping centers where goods and services can be freely imported and exported globally.
If Central America had a true free trade agreement with the US, however, both US and foreign manufacturers would have an enormous incentive to set up shop in the region and produce goods there for the US market.
Over time, capital would flood into the region, greatly increasing the standard of living for Central Americans while providing new sources of goods and services for American entrepreneurs and consumers.
The success of such a plan, of course, is not guaranteed. The regimes of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras could squander the opportunity. They could insist on high domestic taxes or an insecure legal environment in which private business owners would have reason to fear expropriation by the regime.
But when facing the possibility of true free trade with the US, the stakes would become very high indeed, and the regime could choose between guaranteed moderate levels of tax revenue, or the disastrous policies of expropriation.
But no matter how it turns out, the US taxpayer is not on the hook for anything. There is no risk of foreign aid flushed down the toilet. Instead, the upside is substantial: access to low-cost goods and services from American, Asian, and European firms all hungry to take advantage of this new “free trade zone” in the western hemisphere. American entrepreneurs would be able to provides goods and services at lower prices. They could hire more workers. They could invest more of their profits.
Moreover, the geo-political benefits would be substantial. The regimes of the Northern Triangle would become committed to maintaining friendly relations with the US, and the pressures of high levels of migration from the region would be lessened.
The relationship between trade and migration is one of elastic substitutibility (rather than rigid exclusivity): the more (or less) you have of one, the less (or more) you need of the other . [Emphasis added.] Other things being equal, businesses move to low wage areas, and labor moves to high wage areas, thus effecting a tendency toward the equalization of wage rates (for the same kind of labor) as well as the optimal localization of capital. With political borders separating high- from low-wage areas, and with national (nation-wide) trade and immigration policies in effect, these normal tendencies—of immigration and capital export—are weakened with free trade and strengthened with protectionism. As long as Mexican products—the products of a low-wage area—can freely enter a high-wage area such as the U.S., the incentive for Mexican people to move to the U.S. is reduced. In contrast, if Mexican products are prevented from entering the American market, the attraction for Mexican workers to move to the U.S. is increased. Similarly, when U.S. producers are free to buy from and sell to Mexican producers and consumers, capital exports from the U.S. to Mexico will be reduced; however, when U.S. producers are prevented from doing so, the attraction of moving production from the U.S. to Mexico is increased.
Bizarrely, protectionists take the opposite self-defeating approach: they want to cut off trade with other nations, thus reducing the standard of living. This then increases the incentive for foreigners to emigrate to the United States. The protectionists then complain there’s too much immigration and the government must intervene even more to control both trade and migration.
Opponents and proponents of immigration may argue endlessly about the potential downsides and upsides of immigration. (For an especially nuanced and insightful view of the downsides, see Ludwig von Mises’s work on nationalism and immigration .)
With free trade, though, there is no downside, which is why Mises, who allowed for a number of caveats on immigration, made no exceptions for free trade.
For many modern protectionists, though, the desire to close off trade stems not just from economic ignorance, but from an emotional desire to actually harm other countries on nationalistic grounds. The economic implications of these policies then become secondary to other ideological agendas. Mises understood this well, and in Human Action concluded :
We may, for the sake of argument, disregard the fact that protectionism also hurts the interests of the nations which resort to it. But there can be no doubt that protectionism aims at damaging the interests of foreign peoples and really does damage them. … The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war.
George Schultz is correct in the sense that a prosperous Central America is a Central America with less incentive to send its workers and families to North America. But the real solution does not lie in throwing a few extra bucks at the central American regimes in hope they might build a couple of new highways. The real solution lies in expansion of trade, capital investment, and . Only then can a sustainable solution to the region’s poverty be found.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YjIFIy Tyler Durden
Police are warning about this dangerous trend as it erupts across Boone County, a region in West Virginia known for widespread opioid and methamphetamine use.
“We’re seeing this here on the streets in Boone County,” Sgt. Charles Sutphin said. “People are making synthetic type methamphetamine out of wasp spray.”
State Police have said the wasp spray has already led to three overdoses in the last week.
“In my opinion, drugs are so bad around here. It’s so available to people, and then all the time trying things new that we wouldn’t even think about,” Diana Ferguson said.
WCHS first broke the story last Monday, said stores in Boone County on July 12 sold nearly 30 cans of the pesticide.
Sgt. Sutphin said the psychoactive effects of wasp spray include erratic behavior and extreme inflammation and redness of the hands and feet.
“From what we’re being told, if you use it, you know, you might use it once or twice and be fine, but the third time when your body hits that allergic reaction, it can kill you,” Sutphin said.
It’s a cheap fix for meth addicts, Sutphin said, adding that the overall results of its usage are still realtively unknown.
State police in Boone County are working with poison control and local hospitals to ensure that if residents adopt widespread usage of meth infused wasp spray, local officials will be able to manage the increased overdoses expected in the weeks and months ahead.
Local officials are also working on a plan to alert the public in the dangerous of using pesticides to get high – could result in death by the third high.
Some background on Boone County, drug overdose deaths have increased substantially since 2001. The number of deaths in 2016 was nearly five times the number of deaths in 2001.
In 2017, West Virginia led the nation with 57.8 drug overdose deaths per 100,000 residents. Almost a half-million Americans have died of overdoses to prescription drugs, cocaine, heroin, meth, and fentanyl between 1999 and 2017.
The explosion of the drug crisis in the Rust Belt is a result of decades of deindustrialization.
There is and will be no revival of the Rust Belt into 2020 like President Trump has promised – an industrial slowdown is well underway that will lead to more factory closures and job losses, causing financial hardships that tend to force some blue-collar workers into a life of drug addiction.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Z6js1k Tyler Durden
Russian President Vladimir Putin sat down on June 19, 2019, in the Kremlin, for an on the record interview with Oliver Stone. The Russian government has released a transcript of the interview.
Below is Putin’s discussion with Stone about the 2016 presidential election.
Oliver Stone: Yes. So recently, you know Russia has been obviously accused and accused over and over again of interference in the 2016 election. As far as I know there is no proof, it has not turned up. But now in the US there has been an investigation going on about Ukraine’s interference in the election. It seems that it was a very confusing situation, and Poroshenko seems to have been very strongly pro-Clinton, anti-Trump.
Vladimir Putin:Yes, this is no secret.
Oliver Stone: Do you think there was interference?
Vladimir Putin: I do not think that this could be interpreted as interference by Ukraine. But it is perfectly obvious that Ukrainian oligarchs gave money to Trump’s opponents. I do not know whether they did this by themselves or with the knowledge of the authorities.
Oliver Stone: Where they giving information to the Clinton campaign?
Vladimir Putin: I do not know. I am being honest. I will not speak about what I do not know. I have enough problems of my own. They assumed Mrs Clinton would win and did everything to show loyalty to the future US administration. That is nothing special. They wanted the future President to have a good opinion of them. This is why they allowed themselves to make unflattering statements about Trump and supported the Democrats in every possible way. This is no secret at all. They acted almost in public.
Oliver Stone: You do not want to go any further on that because you do not have any information?
Vladimir Putin: You know, this would be inappropriate on my part. If I said something more specific, I would have to put some documents, some papers on the table.
Oliver Stone: You understand that it has huge implications because Mr Trump would be very grateful?
Vladimir Putin:I did not interfere then, I do not want to interfere now, and I am not going to interfere in the future.
Oliver Stone: But that is a noble motive. Unfortunately, the world has degenerated in these two years, with all this backbiting and accusations, dirty fighting. Anyway…
Vladimir Putin:There are no rules at all. It is no holds barred.
Oliver Stone: Well, you have rules. You say no interference.
Vladimir Putin: I have principles.
Oliver Stone: Ok. But you seem to have rules based on those principles.
Vladimir Putin: Well, yes.
Oliver Stone: Ok. Well, you are fighting with one hand tied behind your back.
Vladimir Putin: Why? You mean, because of these principles?
Oliver Stone: Yes. If you knew something about the election, it would tilt the balance in a very weird way.
Vladimir Putin: I think this is simply unrealistic. I have said so many times.
Oliver Stone: What is unrealistic?
Vladimir Putin: To change anything. If you want to return to US elections again – look, it is a huge country, a huge nation with its own problems, with its own views on what is good and what is bad, and with an understanding that in the past few years, say ten years, nothing has changed for the better for the middle class despite the enormous growth of prosperity for the ruling class and the wealthy. This is a fact that Trump’s election team understood. He understood this himself and made the most of it.
No matter what our bloggers – or whoever’s job it is to comment on the internet – might say about the situation in the US, this could not have played a decisive role. It is sheer nonsense. But our sympathies were with him because he said he wanted to restore normal relations with Russia. What is bad about that? Of course, we can only welcome this position.
Oliver Stone: Apparently, it excited the Clinton people a lot. The Clinton campaign accumulated the “Steele dossier.” They paid for it. It came from strange sources, the whole “Steele dossier” issue. Some of it comes from Ukraine. They also went out of their way, it seems to me, with the CIA, with Mr Brennan, John Brennan, and with Clapper, James Clapper, and Comey of the FBI. They all seem to have gotten involved, all intelligence agencies, in an anti-Trump way.
Vladimir Putin: They had levers inside the government, but there is nothing like that here. They applied administrative pressure. It always gives an advantage in countries such as the USA, some countries of Western Europe, about 2 percent on average, at a minimum.
Oliver Stone: Two percent? What are you talking about?
Vladimir Putin: Yes. According to experts, those with administrative pressure they can apply always have a 2 percent edge. You can look at it differently. Some experts believe that in different countries, it can vary, but in countries such as the United States, some European countries, the advantage is 2 percent. This is what experts say, they can be wrong.
Oliver Stone: I do not know. I heard of the one percent, but it seems to get more like 12 percent.
Vladimir Putin: That is possible, depending on how it is used.
Oliver Stone: Well, you are not disagreeing. You are saying that it was quite possible that there was an attempt to prevent Donald Trump from coming into office with a soft, I will call it a soft coup d’état?
Vladimir Putin: In the USA?
Oliver Stone: Yes.
Vladimir Putin: It is still going on.
Oliver Stone: A coup d’état is planned by people who have power inside.
Vladimir Putin: No, I do not mean that. I mean lack of respect for the will of the voters. I think it was unprecedented in the history of the United States.
Oliver Stone: What was unprecedented?
Vladimir Putin:It was the first time the losing side does not want to admit defeat and does not respect the will of the voters.
* * *
[RW note: Putin is the most level headed guy around. Here he is on the inconsistent moves of Trump]:
Oliver Stone: Ok, but beyond Poroshenko, the United States has a shadow here. The United States knows what he is doing, and supported it.
Vladimir Putin: Absolutely.
Oliver Stone: It is the creation of a strategy of tension that worries me enormously. I have seen this happen in so many places now. I think I read on Monday, the Russian bombers, the Russian SU-57 escorted, what was it, the B-52 bomber, a nuclear bomber, US bomber, close to the Russian borders.
Vladimir Putin: The Su-57 aircraft are just entering service. This is a fifth-generation jet fighter. It was the Su-27 that was mentioned.
Oliver Stone: Do you think that is normal?
Vladimir Putin:Actually, it is sad, probably, but this is common practice. US aircraft did not enter our airspace, and our aircraft did not conduct any high-risk maneuvers. But generally speaking, this is not great. Just look where the Baltic or Black seas are located, and where the USA is. It was not us who approached US borders, but US aircraft that approached ours. Such practices had better stop.
Oliver Stone: In this continuing strategy of tension, there was a report in The New York Times last week that the Obama Administration, before they left office, put in what they call a cyber warfare device. It was inserted in Russian infrastructure in January 2017.
Vladimir Putin: This is being discussed almost openly. It was said Russia would be punished for interfering in the election campaign. We do not see anything extraordinary or unexpected here. This should be followed closely. That is the first thing. The second is I believe that we only need to negotiate how we are to live in this high-tech world and develop uniform rules and means of monitoring each other’s actions. We have repeatedly proposed holding talks on this subject to come to some binding agreement.
Oliver Stone: Continuing that theme of strategy of tension, how is Russia affected by the US-Iranian confrontation?
Vladimir Putin: This worries us because this is happening near our borders. This may destabilize the situation around Iran, affect some countries with which we have very close relations, causing additional refugee flows on a large scale plus substantially damage the world economy as well as the global energy sector. All this is extremely disturbing. Therefore we would welcome any improvement when it comes to relations between the US and Iran. A simple escalation of tension will not be advantageous for anyone. It seems to me that this is also the case with the US. One might think that there are only benefits here, but there will be setbacks as well. The positive and negative factors have to be calculated.
Oliver Stone: Yeah. Scary.
Vladimir Putin: No, this is not scary.
Oliver Stone:You sound very depressed, much more depressed than last time.
Vladimir Putin: Last time the situation concerning Iran was not like this. Last time nobody said anything about getting into our energy and other networks. Last time the developments were more positive.
Oliver Stone: The situation is worse now?
Vladimir Putin: Take North Korea, they have also rolled back a bit. Trade wars are unfolding.
Oliver Stone: Venezuela.
Vladimir Putin: Venezuela as well. In other words, regrettably, the situation has not improved, so there is nothing special to be happy about. On the other hand, we feel confident. We have no problems.
Oliver Stone: Well, you are an optimist, and always have been?
Vladimir Putin: Exactly.
Oliver Stone: You are a peacemaker.
Vladimir Putin: Absolutely spot on.
Oliver Stone: So obviously, you have to get together with the Americans, and the Chinese, and the Iranians. I know.
Vladimir Putin: Just do not put the blame on us. Lately no matter what is happening, we always get the blame.
Oliver Stone: Well, the irony is that Mr Trump came to office promising that he was not going to interfere in other countries. He made this overall strategy, he was against the wars that we have started, and ever since he has been in office, it has got worse. Why, one wonders? Is he in charge, or are other people pushing these agendas?
Vladimir Putin: I think he is against this now, too. But life is complicated and diverse. To make the right decision it is necessary to fight for what you believe in.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Oa262Q Tyler Durden
In a bizarre tweet last week that nobody really understood, singer Justin Bieber challenged Tom Cruise to a fight “in the octagon” – for reasons unbeknownst to anybody. Now, it looks as though the one person that could possibly make it happen, UFC President Dana White, is alluding to the fact that it could actually take place.
“I wanna challenge Tom Cruise to fight in the octagon. Tom if you dont take this fight your [sic] scared and you will never live it down. Who is willing to put on the fight? @danawhite ?” Bieber said.
Though nobody is really sure what has started the beef between the two celebrities, UFC president Dana White told TMZ last week that he’s “already taken phone calls from people who claim both stars are interested in the bout.”
White said:
“I’m gonna tell you something interesting… Lots of people will talk about fighting somebody in the UFC or something like that. Whether it’s NFL players or celebrities, it happens a lot. I saw it like everybody else did and didn’t pay too much attention to it.”
He continued:
“I’m not going to say any names, but I’m going to tell you that I got a phone call from a couple of real guys who said that they really do want to do this fight and they believe Tom Cruise would do the fight. I told them, ‘I’ll tell you this, if that’s true… If that’s true, and everybody involved in this thing wants to do it, we can talk.”
Tom Cruise hasn’t publicly responded to the viral tweet since it went out and now, it seems like Justin Bieber is already trying to make excuses to back out of his challenge.
Bieber told TMZ: “It was just a random tweet. I do that stuff sometimes. I think he would probably whoop my ass in a fight. He’s got that dad strength.”
But still, Dana White hasn’t given up on trying to make the fight happen.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2XTU5TX Tyler Durden
Southeast Asian nation has dramatically whipsawed between US-China trade war winner to potential next big tariffed loser
The popular consensus is that Vietnam has been one of the world’s biggest US-China trade war winners, as global supply chains shift production away from tariff-hit China and towards the low-cost Southeast Asian nation.
That upshot, one that may have added as much as 8% to Vietnam’s gross domestic product (GDP) according to one bank’s research, has apparently already run its full course as US President Donald Trump slaps new punitive tariffs on Hanoi’s exports.
In May, Vietnam was added to the US Treasury Department’s list of possible currency manipulators, a designation that could result in punitive measures if proved. That threat presaged this month’s imposition of a whopping new 400% US duty on Vietnamese steel imports that originate from South Korea and Taiwan.
The US could next slap punitive tariffs on certain Vietnamese imports based on allegations Hanoi is allowing Chinese-made products to be rebranded as Vietnamese goods before export to the US to circumvent tariffs on China, a process officials refer to as “transshipment.”
Some economists predict that, for instance, if the US moves to impose a 25% tariff on Vietnam’s exports, as it has done with China for reasons of national security, the move would cause Hanoi’s exports to fall by a quarter and shave off more than 1% from GDP.
That could be in the offing, analysts reckon, in light of Trump’s scathing comment last month that Hanoi was “almost the single worst abuser of everybody” in regard to trade and that “Vietnam takes advantage of us even worse than China.”
That critique was aimed at Vietnam’s high and rising trade surplus with the US, which hit a record US$40 billion last year, up slightly from 2017 and in spite of a concerted Vietnamese effort to buy more from the US.
In the first five months of this year, Vietnam’s trade surplus with the US hit $21.6 billion, double the amount compared with the same period in 2018.
Beyond the rhetoric, America’s new tariffs on Vietnam represent a drastic course shift, one that has caught Vietnamese officials off guard amid what was a strong bilateral warming trend under the Trump administration.
In February, when Hanoi staged a second historic round of US-North Korea peace talks, Trump lavished praise on his Vietnamese hosts.
“You’ve made tremendous progress and it’s a great thing for the world to see,” he told Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc while referring to the one-time battlefield adversaries as “friends.”
Soon after Trump took office in January 2016, Vietnam was one of the first targets of his complaints that certain nations maintained big, unequal trade surpluses with the US.
Those complaints were mollified somewhat after Phuc visited Trump at the White House later that year with a multi-billion dollar purchase order for several Boeing-made commercial aircraft.
Communist Party sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, say they are perplexed by Trump’s volte face. For the last two years, Trump has acted as though Vietnam and the US were “best friends”, one Vietnamese official told Asia Times.
The officials say it is unclear whether the Trump administration is genuine about its threat of possible future sanctions on Vietnamese imports, or whether it is a dramatic negotiating tactic to extract more concessions.
Sources say that Vietnam has made the kind of trade-related commitments that they think Washington supports, and that Trump’s latest comments could merely aim to accelerate their implementation.
For instance, a planned law to create three new special economic zones, which sparked rare nationwide protests last year as many thought they would allow Chinese firms to purchase large swathes of Vietnamese land, has now been indefinitely postponed.
Meanwhile, National Assembly delegates recently called on Communist Party functionaries to curb Chinese investment in Vietnam, with lawmakers arguing that Hanoi should be more particular about which foreign-invested projects it accepts.
Vietnamese authorities have also stiffened a crackdown on Chinese products being re-routed through Vietnam on their way to the US, a circumvention of tariffs that has greatly peeved the Trump administration.
To some extent, Vietnam has mitigated the costs of possible US sanctions by signing trade deals with other partners. Earlier this year, it formally became part of the reformed Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, a multilateral trade pact which Trump took the US out of in one of his first acts as president.
Moreover, on June 30, Vietnam finally signed a free-trade agreement with the European Union after several years of protracted negotiations.
The deal, which will remove import duties from 99% of Vietnam’s exports within seven years, up from 71% when the deal was signed, could boost Vietnam’s exports to the EU by 20% in 2020, according to official estimates.
Last year, the EU purchased $42.5 billion worth of Vietnam’s exports.
Still, the US is Vietnam’s most important trading partner, a fact that is not likely to change any time soon. Last year, the US imported $49 billion worth of Vietnamese goods, while exporting just $9.6 billion to Vietnam.
In the first five months of this year, US imports of Vietnamese goods have jumped to $25.8 billion, compared to $18.9 billion over the same period last year, evidence that Vietnam is benefitting immensely from the trade war.
In June, Japanese investment bank Nomura estimated that Vietnam had gained the equivalent of 7.9% of its GDP from trade diversion and supply chain shifts caused by the US-China spat. (The second largest beneficiary was Taiwan, which has gained about 2.1% of its GDP, the research shows.)
Some analysts believe Washington’s reaction to Vietnam’s trade practices is perfectly normal, particularly in light of allowing Chinese companies to use it as a base to disguise their exports to the US.
Vietnam, now one of the world’s 50 largest economies, is simply being asked to abide by the same rules the US expects from other trading partners – the same rationale that led to the US-China trade spat.
“Every fast-industrializing Asian nation has been at first indulged by the US and other major Western trading partners and then, as its market power became formidable, pressed to play by the rules of international trade,” wrote David Brown, an expert on Vietnam, in World Politics Review this month.
“Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan all cleared that hurdle years ago, none without considerable turmoil. Vietnam is still on probation, and must find the self-discipline to prioritize its larger interests,” the ex-US diplomat added.
Geopolitics, however, are confusing matters. Hanoi has enjoyed US preferential treatment for years because of its strategic importance to American interests, including vis-à-vis China in the South China Sea.
When former US president Barack Obama launched his “pivot to Asia” policy earlier this decade, Vietnam was considered an important new ally because it was one of the few claimants that strongly opposed Chinese expansionism in the maritime area.
Overlooking Vietnam’s many faults – namely it’s abysmal human rights record – has been the price Western nations paid to secure cordial relations with a government that agrees on the need to contain China’s regional rise.
Vietnam has willingly flaunted this position to extract concessions from the West while often playing the US and China off one another to maximize diplomatic benefits from both.
Trump’s recent moves have certainly and unexpectedly put Hanoi on the back foot. Sources say its bureaucracy is working overtime to reform its system on export permits, while also mulling new ways of to reduce its trade surplus.
It is no secret that the US wants Vietnam to purchase more American-made military equipment, and move away from its traditional arms supplier, Russia.
Buying a big-ticket cache of new US military hardware would certainly be looked upon kindly in Washington, a move that would help to narrow Hanoi’s trade surplus while further cementing US-Vietnam defense ties.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Gke4Ao Tyler Durden
When Ray Dalio issued a public warning last week that in the coming “new paradigm” investors will be forced to buy gold while selling stocks, which “are unlikely to be good real returning investments and that those that will most likely do best will be those that do well when the value of money is being depreciated and domestic and international conflicts are significant, such as gold”, many accused the manager of the world’s largest hedge fund of hypocrisy at worst, and talking his book at best, namely that he was pitching gold even as he was going ever longer stocks.
It turns out he wasn’t, and in fact Dalio appears to have been putting his money where his skeptical mouth was; 4.9% less money than he had at the start of the year to be precise, because according to the FT, Bridgewater’s flagship (non risk-parity) “Pure Alpha” fund suffered one of its worst first-half performances in two decades this year after being whipsawed and wrong-footed by rebounding markets.
The $150 billion Bridgewater saw its Pure Alpha fund, which is the discretionary fund whose returns are linked to macroeconomic forecasts and trades, lost a whopping 4.9% in the six months to June even as global equity and bond markets soared on hopes of looser monetary policy, with the S&P posting one of its best first half returns in history; Bridgewater not only underperformed the FTSE All-World index, which up 15% by the end of June, but also its peer group, as the average macro hedge fund returned 5.2% over the same period according to HFR.
The startling underperformance followed a strong year for Pure Alpha in 2018, when the clearly bearish biased fund delivered a net 14.6% return, even as most other hedge funds lost money.
Still, as the FT notes citing a source, Bridgewater has reportedly pared some of its earlier losses, and was down 1.45% cent in the year to mid-July, implying a solid rebound in the first two weeks of the month.
While it is unclear which trades hit Bridgewater, the FT notes the fund’s particularly poor performance in January when Pure Alpha declined by 4.5%, suggesting it went into the new year expecting further turbulence and instead suffered as the market recovered on the back of a shocking reversal by central banks.
Some have also suggested that Bridgewater was one of the whales hit by the stunning reversal in the Eurodollar market in recent months, as rate cut odds soared in the past two months.
Meanwhile, offsetting much of the Pure Alpha losses, Bridgewater’s passively managed All-Weather fund, which unlike Pure Alpha is immune from macro-economic shifts and is instead a risk-parity, “balanced” fund, returned 13% through June, which was to be expected in a year where both stocks and bonds have soared, resulting in the best returns for risk parity funds in over two decades.
As the FT reminds us, Pure Alpha also had a difficult start to the year in 2009 and in 2016, according to data seen by the FT, but managed to claw back its losses in the second halves of those years. It was unclear if the Pure Alpha fund was still positioned bearishly as of this moment.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YkRJwN Tyler Durden
